


how to soften a fall (and other wisdoms)

by kaumari



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Emotionally and physically, Healing, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Past Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi - Freeform, Serious Injuries, Snapshots, but it's semi structured so you don't get too confused, in the sense it required surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29988546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaumari/pseuds/kaumari
Summary: An Achilles' tendon rupture isn't the end of the world, but being off the court might as well be, especially when all the shaky walls of Atsumu's life come falling down in its wake. In the following months, he finds himself drifting in the rubble of his old life, and it's not until Osamu stages an intervention that he finds the opportunity to pull himself together and start anew. After all, if there's one person who's always been able to keep him on his feet, it's Kita Shinsuke.And if he learns a few other things along the way, that's all the better.
Relationships: Kita Shinsuke/Miya Atsumu
Comments: 4
Kudos: 44
Collections: Haikyuu Big Bang 2020





	how to soften a fall (and other wisdoms)

**Author's Note:**

> in case anyone wanted a heads up: there is one offhand mention of committing sexual acts but nothing in depth or graphic it's just Said
> 
> on that note: it took me 6 months to write this on and off, i struggled with it but ultimately i wanted to go back to my old snapshot style writing. i hope i didn't muck it up too badly ;;; enjoy the wonderful art that goes along with this fic (from the amazing [malo](https://twitter.com/chromliker))
> 
> link to art [here!](https://twitter.com/chromliker/status/1370196291272073217?s=19)

1.

The thing is, Atsumu hadn’t thought Kita was being literal when he said they would be getting up with the sun. He’d thought it would be a calm wake-up, stretching sore muscles as the rays of weak sunlight filtering through the windows, drinking in the morning as he prepared for the day. He’s woken up instead by Kita’s loudest alarm, ringing with intent to harm, and in his sleepy haze is completely disoriented by the fact that the sky outside is still half dark. Without exerting more energy than he can manage before 7 o’clock, he shuts off the damned alarm and rolls over on his futon to stare at an out-of-focus ceiling for the fifteen seconds it takes for Kita to poke his head into the room.

“Yer up.” Gods, Atsumu hates how he phrases it as a statement. There’s no room to argue, _“Yes I’m up, but I feel like a reanimated corpse, so at what cost?”_ He groans inarticulately and forces his eyes to squint up at Kita to bring his image into focus. “Come eat, we have to be out in the fields soon.”

“Kita-san, it’s”—he turns to look at the clock Kita had set by him—“5:11. Why is it so early?”

“The ducks need to be let out, Atsumu. And then we have to make sure that the paddies aren’t underwatered. The days are only gettin’ hotter.”

Mid-July is a pain in as many ways as Atsumu’s leg cramps at night are. The rice harvest is almost upon them, only a few weeks out now, and Kita takes them out routinely to check if the crops are coming along well. The paddy fields are vast, and that means they spend a considerable amount wading through the water and checking the rice for progress. Kita had drilled the 50% heading rule into his head within a week of arriving on the farm, so he’s pretty confident in his ability to identify whether the rice has begun that stage yet.

“Alright, alright,” he says instead, holding back the wince that comes with moving too quickly before he’s done his exercises. If his therapist sees even the slightest stagnation in progress, she’ll push off his clearance for another few weeks. He knows he should be trusting the process, but the incessant need to be back on the court outweighs those concerns. “I’ll be over soon.”

Soon turns out to be over half an hour, and by then Kita is long gone. But there’s still a steaming serving of breakfast waiting for him on the table, provided with unspoken care. When Atsumu finally makes it outside, still half-asleep despite the freezing shower he’d suffered, he sees no sign of Kita in the front of the house, but the rice stalks move wildly despite the sedate wind. So he’s already let the ducks out, which means Atsumu will probably find him around back. That’s how Kita likes to complete his rotations—he works opposite to the ducks so they never get in each other’s business, not when he can help it.

Atsumu finds him in the middle of the southeastern quadrant, humming to an old classic on his portable radio. It’s a peculiarity, Atsumu thinks. Kita hums songs so carefully it only takes a few seconds to recognize the melody, but he’ll never sing along. Somehow he’s certain Kita would have a wonderful singing voice if only he would give it a chance, just as he’s wonderful at everything else. Memories of high school filter through his mind as he continues to watch Kita from the shade of the house’s overhang. Kita hadn’t been a prodigy, but he’d done well for himself. He’d held his own against some of the toughest teams in the country in his only season on the court, relying entirely on years of practice to pull him through. Atsumu has never had to worry about crumbling under pressure, and he wonders what it must have been like for his old captain, thrust onto the court with such little preparation.

Kita would be a great singer, Atsumu decides, if only he would actually say the words. And while Kita is as blunt as they come, when it comes to anything surrounding feelings, he never takes the easy road forward.

2.

 _Snap_. It’s not audible—not to anyone. Not even to Atsumu, but the difference is that he experiences it. One moment he’s jumping, the next he’s collapsing, thrown off balance by the pain shooting through his calf. A mini ball has lodged itself under the crease of his knee, intent on being painfully felt with every aborted step. The play is stopped when he doesn’t get up.

An injury is a terrible thing. An injury means you’re put on IR. An injury takes you out of the rest of the season, right before the playoffs. An injury is Atsumu’s worst nightmare. Naturally, this is the order Atsumu’s life free falls in.

The Achilles’ tendon rupture is clean—his one grace—but it’s because it’s a complete rupture that they require surgery. And after the surgery, what is left for him? Six months of R&R, hardly anyone to keep him company. That’s when he should’ve realized all the mismatched pieces of his life were never going to last.

The first to go is his grip on his purpose. Volleyball has been the drive for him for years now, carrying over from high school without a moment’s pause to evaluate. He feels useless, sitting in on practice as an assistant rather than as a player, and he wishes it were him on the court and not Yamasaki. He stops going to practice for a while as a way to distance himself from the growing hole in his chest.

This leads to missing team hangouts, since he’d muted their group chat ages ago and apparently all of their plans were made post-practice. He doesn’t feel nearly as guilty missing these, since he wasn’t much of a recreational drinker. If he was going to get drunk, he’d call Suna up for an ill-advised trip up to Amagasaki, where they’d crash at Osamu’s and not leave until noon the next day.

The third, and perhaps most difficult to come to terms with, is that without the buffer of volleyball, he realizes he has no real understanding of his teammates. He knows Meian is married, knows Tómas is Colombian-American, knows Bokuto has a high school sweetheart, and so on and so forth. He knows all these things about his team, but he’s never been able to experience them. He doesn’t know what Meian’s wife is like, if Tómas’s Spanish is better than his Japanese, who Bokuto’s sweetheart even is. Most of all, he wonders if, after all this time, he’d understood Kiyoomi at all.

3.

Atsumu sees the lights of the farmhouse from the edge of the drive. His face twists into a frown: he’d specifically told Kita not to wait up for him, since he’d known he would be back far later than what would be considered reasonable. His physical therapy appointment had gotten pushed back today, and instead of returning by six to have an easy, unhurried dinner, Atsumu is pushing through exhaustion to make it back before eleven. He’s only barely managed—the lime green clock numbers read 10:52.

He turns off the engine and shakily gets out of the truck, shuffling around to make his injured leg to lose the stiffness it had settled into during the drive. He enters quietly, and when he peeks into the main room, he’s unsure if he’s surprised to see Kita slumped over the kotatsu or not. On one hand, it was later than Kita’s internal body clock was used to, and on the other, he’d expected Kita to be wide awake and doing whatever necessary to keep himself that way. By the book falling out of his fingers, he’d been trying to do exactly that, but it hadn’t gone to plan.

A rush of unsettling warmth flooded Atsumu’s senses, leaving his chest uncomfortably full and his skin prickling. The smell of dinner, sauteed vegetables and sweet sauce, paired with the fresh fish Kita had bought at the market earlier that week, fills the room. With a soft sigh, he carefully extracts Kita’s book out from under his arm and sets it aside. He finds his covered dinner in the kitchen and warms it up.

It’s delicious, as per usual, because Kita has never done anything by halves, just like him, and because Kita never gave up on anything until he could do it forward and backward, awake and asleep. When he did something, he did it right.

There’s an uncomfortable nugget of truth burying itself in Atsumu’s heart, paired with the knowledge that Kita deems him important enough to stay up with. The stifling August weather is sliding into brisk September, and with September comes the end of Atsumu’s time here. He doesn’t want to think about the immediacy of it, wants to live in this blissful dream he’s been in for the past two months.

So instead he savors the spices of the vegetables, tastes the tender fat of the fish, watches the unmarred peace of Kita’s sleeping face.

He wakes Kita once he’s done, full on love of some kind or another, and with his sleep-rough voice, Kita asks when he came back.

“Haven’t been back long. Dinner was delicious, but you knew that, didn’t ya?”

“Still nice to hear it from someone else,” Kita laughs hoarsely, stretching himself languidly like a cat, peering up at Atsumu with eyes far too clear for someone who had been passed out only seconds before. He breaks eye contact, fearing what someone as perceptive as Kita will find in his too-honest expression. His poker face is worse than Bokuto and Hinata’s, sadly.

“Time to sleep,” he announces, louder than was strictly necessary, and ushers Kita to his room. The lights are switched off, plunging them into darkness, and leaving Atsumu’s with the stark consequences of his thoughts. But that will be his future self’s problem, up to the point where he can’t ignore it any longer.

4.

He still remembers their first date. Now, he looks back on it and realizes how lackluster it was, full of awkward silences and aborted glances. Atsumu should’ve known better than to take them to the mall, full of crowds jostling each other and a cacophony of noise. Kiyoomi was never going to be comfortable there, but Atsumu hadn’t known this. How that wasn’t the end of it all is baffling.

It took a few more dates before Atsumu picked up on how Kiyoomi seemed to press himself closer when they were around too many people, how the interference in his personal space was despised above all. That it took so long—Kiyoomi never mentioned anything about it, Atsumu never asked—was only the first instance that their communication would leave something to desire.

Kiyoomi never, ever said what was bothering him voluntarily, and it was always up to Atsumu to either determine it from context clues or drag it out from between Kiyoomi’s teeth. He was patient, had learned to be, and Kiyoomi was accommodating, had learned to be. Bu at learnings sometimes fail, and when they did, their fiery arguments and frosty silences were a sight to behold. They never let it affect their team, but in private, all bets were off.

Atsumu had grown disenchanted with it all well before he consciously realized it. So when they drifted, there was a small, guilty part of him that felt relieved it was over.

5.

“Hey, is that little one lookin’ a bit worse for wear to you?” Atsumu points at the duckling in question, trailing behind its flock with a decidedly dejected air. Kita frowns and looks up, his face cast in shadows by the wide-brim hat on his head. “I think it might be hurt.”

“Well let’s find out,” Kita hums, wading through the water to reach the duckling and scooping it up with gentle hands. He clucks soothingly when it flails a bit, then notes how one wing seems more crooked than the other. “Its wing is fractured, I think. If it were broken, it wouldn’t be able to move it so freely.”

“What can you do about it?” Atsumu asks, peering over Kita’s shoulder to watch the duckling nip at Kita’s gloved fingers.

“Not much. I can try to fashion a simple splint for it, and it’ll need to be taken into the house for a few weeks to heal.” There’s a thoughtful look on his face, plans being drawn, discarded, and enacted all in the space of a breath. Kindness, softness, looks good on him, and it’s with a heavy exhale that Atsumu realizes how many times that same look has been directed to him. More times than he can count in the past few weeks. It’s always for small things, inconsequential things, like how he always puts his left shoe on first or how laundry is always folded a certain way, or how he harps on Atsumu’s knife work because _“while it may get the job done, it’s not right.”_ Kita cares about so many things, all the minute details that would normally slip through the cracks.

“What will you do after that?”

“I can’t get attached,” is Kita’s simple response, but the gentle cup of his palms indicates otherwise. Atsumu doesn’t point it out, but it does make him wonder why Kita is so set on providing as much care as he can for this duckling before he has to let it go.

6.

Atsumu clutches his cup tighter, waits for his fingertips to stop burning. They’ll either numb themselves, pressed so hard his blood can’t reach them, or the nerves will die off, and he doesn’t particularly care which one happens first. He hasn’t needed his hands in three months anyway.

Turns out there are a lot of things he hasn’t needed in three months. That’s why Kiyoomi is here after all.

Maybe he shouldn’t call him Kiyoomi anymore. But Sakusa is too strange—he hasn’t called him that since their second year in high school, and even that hadn’t been for long. The man in front of him is not a stranger to be relegated to the sidelines of his life, can’t be summed up by the inherent distance brought by “Sakusa”. It’s a strange dilemma. How to keep intact those memories that are best left to collect dust. How to hold someone at an arm’s length away will retaining the closeness befitting your history together.

“Was all of this a mistake?” It’s not exactly the question he wanted to ask. Nonetheless, it’s a question, and it’s close enough to _“Where did this go wrong?”_ that he can accept it. It balloons in the silence, takes up the space around them with its echo.

Kiyoomi sips his tea and examines Atsumu like he examines a volleyball, or a play formation, or a block. It’s how he examines the few things in his life that he tolerates, would go so far as to say loves. 

“I don’t think so,” is all Kiyoomi deigns to answer with, and Atsumu exhales with a huff. Expected, but still disappointing.

“Then what _do_ ya think?”

He takes another dragging sip, “I think neither of us really care anymore.”

“Is that all it is—” a beat of hesitation, where Omi-kun, Kiyoomi, Sakusa all tangle themselves into one name, “—Kiyoomi? Ya think we stopped carin’?” Sharp, cutting eyes reflect in their likeness, and they have always hurt each other with only their gaze, but never like this. Atsumu’s heart feels like it’s being chipped at, but it’s the earth-shattering revelation he’d thought it would be. Somehow, this is worse than if it had all hit at once. He’s instead forced to confront the fact that he’s been ignoring their short decline into limbo for months. Kiyoomi doesn’t respond, as if he knows Atsumu doesn’t want an answer.

They drink their tea in silence, and when they finish Kiyoomi silently hands him a small box he’d brought with, filled with the valuables Atsumu had left behind on his last visit—over a month ago, now that he thinks about it. When Kiyoomi leaves, it doesn’t feel like a hole is gaping in his chest. Neither of them said it officially, but in the next hour, all of their date pictures have been deleted from each of their Instagram accounts, and Atsumu knows this breakup is permanent.

7.

For once, Kita towers over him. His hands rest on the arms of the wooden chair, an aging thing that creaks whenever they shift. It’s not creaking now. Brown eyes, on just this side of golden, dull in the shadow of a mountain, and Atsumu can’t bring himself to look away. In them, he holds innumerable secrets, an understanding of the world Atsumu craves to share if only to stand on equal footing.

Oh, to wax poetic about love. If only Atsumu was such a person. He isn’t, never has been, never will be, but still. Staring at Kita, mapping his features, the familiarity of slopes and ridges he wishes he had the privilege to touch, he wishes he were. If only to understand what was so profound about the thrum of his heart, the captivating snare of Kita’s eyes, the warmth of his hands. Callouses, hard and weathered, brush his hand. Callouses, like his own, from different walks of life.

“What do ya want, Atsumu?” An echo of a question, resonating through time. Kiyoomi and Kita overlaying, combining to ask one insistent question. _What do ya want, Atsumu?_

“Are ya gonna kiss me, Kita-san?” A diversion, a decoy. He doesn’t have an answer. Kita is unreadable, but he leans closer.

Is Atsumu disappointed when Kita’s lips press against his forehead? Is that what the swoop in his stomach points to? He doesn’t know, he doesn’t want to know, he _needs_ to know.

His eyes follow Kita’s back as he walks out to the fields. The chair creaks when he allows himself to lean back. _What do ya want, Atsumu? Ya better figure it out, and fast. Harvest season is almost here._

And Kita won’t chase after him when it’s over. Not because he doesn’t care, but because Atsumu is the one with a demanding travel schedule, and if he isn’t willing to work for this, it’s doomed from the start.

The force he stands up with makes the chair fall backward with a crash, and it might be broken but Atsumu has more important things to worry about. He sprints out into the fields, which makes his heel protest but not painfully so, and reaches for Kita’s wrist an urgent “Kita-san!” falls from his lips. Kita spins around, surprise written in the fall of his mouth and the widening of his eyes.

“Kita-san,” he says again, breathless. “Will you wait for me?” It’s fine if he won’t chase Atsumu, but will Kita even give him a chance?

A long, searching look later, Kita merely dips his head. “Not forever. But I could stand to wait a while longer.”

8.

(Here’s the first cruelty. Kita satisfies his hunger the way Kiyoomi never could. With Kiyoomi, no matter how many times they kissed, jerked each other off before practice, fucked each other into a bed hard enough to make the headboard shake, it was never fulfilling. Maybe that was the first sign it wasn’t meant to last. With Kita, every sigh is met with a questioning gaze, and every wince of pain comes with an offer for an ice pack or tea. It’s the caring that satiates him more than anything, the genuine interest in his well-being. It’s not that Kiyoomi didn’t care if he was feeling well—it’s more that they were so painfully independent that they always assumed they would handle it on their own.

The second cruelty is that not once in two years have they ever said “I love you.”)

9.

“Kita-san, I love ya, I swear I do.”

“Will you say that every time I make sashimi?”

Atsumu swallows quickly to reply. “Of course! I never had time to make it myself after joinin’ the Black Jackals, so gettin’ ta eat it is a real treat.” A sudden silence overcomes them both.

“Then I’m glad,” Kita begins, softer than before, “I could give you something special in your last week.” The fish gets stuck in his throat, seeking one last chance at freedom, and Atsumu chokes on his swallow and fights the tears in his eyes. He wants to make a joke, say something about how he’s not dying, but he has enough sense to realize that their sheltered life here has been completely detached from their true realities. There’s nothing to prove this will last when Atsumu has to leave, back to Osaka and the only love of his life.

Of course, the new reluctance that drags his feet insists that’s not precisely true anymore, that volleyball has steadily drifted from his mind the longer he’s stayed here, but he’s doing an excellent job of ignoring it. And he’s doing an excellent job of ignoring the part of him that’s reading too far into Kita’s reserved sigh, because they have absolutely nothing to do with Atsumu leaving. It might be because of Mai.

“How’s Mai?” He carefully looks away to hide the insincerity of his question.

“Her wing is healing fine,” Kita answers, paying closer attention to the spoon of sugar he’s pouring into his tea than Atsumu. “I don’t particularly want to sell her.” He meets Atsumu’s startled expression with his distinct calm.

Atsumu flounders for a moment before coming up with, “But I thought ya didn’t wanna make exceptions?”

Kita hums. “I did say that, didn’t I?” He adds nothing more, and Atsumu recognizes that as his cue to drop the topic. Predictably, he bulldozes through it regardless.

“Kita-san, as much as I love Mai, you said ya didn’t wanna get attached.” Kita raises an eyebrow at Atsumu’s tone, tinged with an edge that belies a deeper injury, and takes one long, easy sip of tea.

“I did. Circumstances change.”

“What could possibly change yer mind about lettin’ Mai go?”

“This isn’t about Mai anymore, is it Atsumu?”

Atsumu considers arguing, digging his heels in and refusing to let Kita see through him. It won’t work, of course, but his stubborn streak refuses to die without a fight. His newly invigorated Kita-pleaser bests it in a duel to the death, and Atsumu deflates with a groan.

“Yes.”

“I can’t read your mind. You’ll have to tell me what this is actually about.”

That chafes him. Really, it shouldn’t, because he knows that if he wants to fix this then he’ll have to start the conversation. But how could he find the words to explain himself, the tangible ache that came with the scorn?

_Kita standing over him, the most open he’d ever seen the other. The expectations in his eyes, or perhaps the lack of such, looking for Atsumu’s motivations and drive, whether they align with his own. Whether there was any chance Atsumu would ever want the same thing as him._

“Why was it that the moment I decided what I wanted, you pulled away?” he asks in the end, sunset and eyes that glow gold in its light mixing in his memories. Kita is quiet, sipping his tea and turning his gaze out the window.

“It’s not that simple,” he murmurs, and Atsumu’s mouth twists.

“Then make it simple, Kita-san. You’ve never been the kinda person to overcomplicate anythin’.”

“How can I?” Those golden brown eyes turn back to him, pin him in place. “It was a lapse in judgment. You wouldn’t want a relationship with me.”

A wave of annoyance crests in Atsumu’s chest. It crashes on his heart, washes out the desire to avoid conflict.

“You can’t decide what I want,” he says, enunciating himself clearly so Kita can’t pretend he doesn’t understand. “The real question is, Kita-san, do you want this? I’ve had enough of being taken for a fool.”

“Of course I want this.” White knuckles around his red cup draw Atsumu’s attention. As if the blood in his hand is seeping out of him. “But the odds—”

“I’ve beaten worse odds,” Atsumu says, “and I will continue to beat the odds.” He looks outside, watches the sun dip behind the mountains, the light chasing after it. “I think it’s time for you to tell me what ya want.” And with that, Atsumu leaves Kita at the table. It’s an early night yet, but he doesn’t feel like whiling it away like he usually does. Hopefully, sleep will find him early tonight.

10.

Osamu sits him down at the counter of Onigiri Miya, well after the lights have gone down in the dining area and the city outside is as quiet as it will be all day. Atsumu doesn’t look at him, content to pick at the skin on the side of his fingernail and ignore the knowledge that this is most likely an intervention. He’s getting pretty damn tired of those. For his part, Osamu continues to clean his workspace like this isn’t a big deal. Like Atsumu hasn’t been falling apart at the seams, searching for the security he thought he had in life. It’s as if the floor had dropped out from beneath him, leaving him flailing in the murky waters below.

“You haven’t been yerself,” Osamu starts, and Atsumu groans. He slumps forward, burying his hands in his hair.

“I know, I know. What are you gonna make me do about it?”

“I can’t make ya do shit,” Osamu retorts, but it lacks the heat he’d usually argue with. That’s what clues Atsumu in to how seriously his brother is taking this. “But I wanted to tell ya I’ve noticed. I don’t think sittin’ cooped up in your apartment all day, avoidin’ yer team and ex, is healthy.”

“I’m not avoidin’ them,” Atsumu argues ineffectually, because both of them know that’s exactly what he’s doing. The problem doesn’t exist if he doesn’t make himself face it. “I’m just takin’ some time for myself. Injuries are tough.”

“That they are. Which is why I’m givin’ you an out.” Atsumu looks up expectantly. Osamu has his arms crossed triumphantly, as if he knows Atsumu will give in the moment he hears the proposal. It merely strengthens his resolve to not give in to whatever it is Osamu is about to reveal.

“Get on with it.”

“Kita-san is lookin’ for an extra hand over the summer.” Atsumu’s body stills. Whatever he’d been expecting, it hadn’t been this. He knew, in the back of his mind, that Osamu still frequently met with Kita because of his business, and that they talk more regularly than he and Kita do anymore. “And the physical therapist has been telling ya to get out more now that yer healin’.”

“But why Kita-san?”

“Where would’ja rather go?” Osamu asks seriously. “Think on it, ‘Tsumu. I’m not askin’ for you to know exactly what ya want right now, but before the week’s over you better figure it out.”

All he does is think about it. When he wakes up, it’s the second thought in his mind, right behind getting a strong cup of coffee to make the harsh morning bearable. It’s there when he completes his daily exercises, no matter how loudly he turns up his music to drown it out. It’s there when he makes an attempt at cooking Gin’s favorite ramen recipe, it’s there when he brushes his teeth and has only his reflection for company, it’s there as he drifts to sleep. How much would it hurt to take a break like this? To go out to the countryside and make himself useful in a less stressful environment? Even his therapist sees no problem with it, so it’s not as though that’s an excuse.

It boils down to the fact that he’ll see Kita again for the first time in months, perhaps years. And in the end, that’s what makes him decide he’ll do it.

Osamu drops him off in late June, half-throwing Atsumu out on his backside because of how much of an annoyance he’d been. It wasn’t his fault that the passing countryside was painful sparse of anything remotely interesting to look at, with only endless forests and fields, occasionally interrupted by a mountain in the distance. Nothing magnificent or eye-catching, nothing he hadn’t seen for years before this, and so he’d turned to the next best source of entertainment, one that had never let him down.

There had been a figure standing on the porch of the farmhouse, a wide-brimmed hat hiding his face in shadows. The easy grace with which Kita leaned against the railing almost made him unrecognizable, but Atsumu hadn’t spent a year memorizing his senior’s habits for nothing. As much as Kita might have tried to hide it, Atsumu knew only one person who carried themself with such poise, and he might as well put that knowledge to use.

His heart stutters strangely when the hat comes off, revealing wheat-tan skin and a sweet, welcoming smile, and that’s when Atsumu knew he was in for it. Ill-advised high school crushes aside, he doesn’t think he ever properly prepared for meeting Kita Shinsuke five years out of high school and all the changes it would bring with.

This summer wasn’t going to be as easy-going as he expected.

11.

_“What do ya want, Atsumu?”_

It’s an anticlimactic moment when it all comes rushing back to him. He wants this, whatever he can have of it. He wants Kita’s hummed singing, and the gentleness with which he handles his ducklings. He wants unspoken affection in the form of food being kept warm for his arrival, of an extra apple cut in slices for Atsumu to wander in and take. He wants sleepy mornings looking forward to the day ahead and satisfied nights looking back on all they’ve accomplished.

He wants to be able to love Kita and have Kita love him back, without worrying about how they’ll make it work. If they want it this badly, they’ll figure it out together. Nothing lost, nothing gained, and Atsumu is tired of missing chances because he isn’t brave enough to take them.

He remembers now, Kita highlighted by the sun with head tipped back in laughter, bright and unapologetic. Even now, Atsumu is starstruck. He had known there was so much to love about Kita, more than he could possibly learn in any one lifetime. He could spend the rest of his life learning everything there was to know about Kita and it wouldn’t be enough.

Atsumu isn’t naive. He knows it’ll be a test of patience to travel all over Japan in the winter, during the only part of the season Kita gets any measure of a break. He knows long-distance is a test of wills, of how much they care about getting to know each other and make it work. At the very least, knowing him from high school would make the first part relatively painless. At the very least, Atsumu is incredibly determined to make this work. At the very least, Kita seemed equally determined to do the same.

They had a conversation the very next day, when Kita succinctly and maturely laid out all the facts about their situation and his reluctance to start anything if Atsumu would only treat it as a flight of fancy. Sure, it stung a bit that Kita would think such a thing, but he couldn’t begrudge his doubts. He merely reiterated his previous point, and it made Kita look at him with a twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

And it all feels a bit up in the air, seeing where they stand when Atsumu returns to the starting roster, seeing whether the strain of not seeing each other for weeks on end would result in the radio silence they’d gone through these past few years. Still, it leaves him with hope, and Atsumu isn’t about to let a second chance slip out of his hands so easily.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/kaumaridevi) \+ [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/kaumaridevi)!


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